Question: What must a weak servant do to gain enough strength to carry on in the way of our Shaykh?

Be around the strong ones. Be around strong ones. If you are weak, don’t be by yourself. Be around people but don’t be around weak ones, they’ll make you weak. Be around strong ones. Learn from them. Observe them. Be with them. Slowly, you will take their color. You will become strong. The strong ones, maybe their way is a little different, maybe their way you don’t really understand, maybe their way your ego is not going to accept, but don’t deny them. You run away from them, you reject them, you are going to be in worse situation.

Allah swt is saying, ‘Be with the Saliheen.’ He is not giving a commandment, a command, in the Qurane Kerim saying, ‘be Saliheen. Be righteous.’ He says, ‘Be with the righteous ones.’ He understands how weak we are. But in your association, you will become that who you associate with. If you associate with good people, even if you are bad, you will become good. If you are good and you associate with bad people, what do you think is going to become to you? So it is all about association. To be with who you are going to associate, what is it that you want to be. We know this from dunya. If you want to be someone with a good education, you have to be around those who are educated, who have high knowledge and usually they cluster around what is call the school or a college, so you want to enter into that same institution, to become like one of them. Doesn’t matter if you are the last one in the class, at least you belong to that institution. You have that name, you have that fragrance. Correct?

It is the same now with ahiret, with changing your character and becoming close to Allah swt. If you got a bad habit, so many people they are saying, ‘I’m smoking, how do I stop myself from smoking?’ I say, first stop yourself from hanging out with people who smoke. Same thing, ‘I do drugs. I drink. I do wrong things.’ First, stop associating with those ones who are doing these wrong things. Because all these wrong things, nobody does it alone. They like to do it in groups. You were introduced to it by someone else. You didn’t really discover it by yourself. So many wrong things, someone said, ‘try this.’ You said, ‘no.’ ‘Try, try it’s okay.’ Then you are introduced to his world, introduced to the people. Then you are stuck there. So I say, first stop associating with people who smoke. At least try to find time, when they are smoking don’t be with them. When they are not smoking, it’s okay. Then it’s going to show how serious you are in getting rid of that habit. You can try to get rid of it by yourself. You can probably do it, but you’ll go back to it right away because as Hz Ali (kw) is saying, ‘A man’s religion is according to the religion of his friends.’ And here when we talk about religion, Deen, is lifestyle. Your lifestyle is according to the lifestyle of those who are your friend, who you associate with. Make sure you associate with good ones. SelamAleykum.